


And I Will Guard the Gates

by WerewolvesAreReal



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Era, Gen, Hogwarts Founders Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6536797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WerewolvesAreReal/pseuds/WerewolvesAreReal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The basilisk lives for a thousand years. She watches the creation of a school, a haven, a legacy. She safeguards her people and is banished and forgotten. And after all her toils, she dies here, half-mad, in a corpse-strewn chamber at the hands of a twelve year old boy.<br/>She had a name, once.<br/>No one thinks about the fact that she had a name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Will Guard the Gates

She does not remember the moment of her hatching because even basilisk memories are not that perfect. But she remembers soft hands and an approving mutter, _“Earnung, earnung,”_ as she slips slowly over the writhing coils of her brothers and sisters. Chickens cluck and squabble in the distance, and frogs croak weakly before darting away. They are slow. She eats many frogs in those first years, and they slide soft and hot down her throat.

She eats her brothers and sisters, too, the ones smaller than her. They bite at her scales with weak teeth and flash their gleaming eyes, but her gaze is stronger. She swims through the earth like water, and they flail their tails like humans.

When she is older the man who smells of iron and broken eggs winds her around his shoulders when he walks outside. She does not bite him because he feeds her frogs and because she is proud. Her siblings are dead and this one knows it. This is significant, somehow. She does not remember why.

He waves a stick at her every day and mutters a few words.

The man starts to wind cloth around her eyes and she dislikes this. Sometimes he will remove it for a brief instant. When she looks she is always facing something – a pig, or a goat, or another human – and then the cloth will be back.

There are screams, often. She does not understand the screaming.

One winter the man rouses her from the heated interior of a cart. She recognizes him by scent. He lifts her hastily into the air and she hisses a warning. He starts to untie the cloth around her eyes, though, and her irritation with the cold is swept away by excitement.

She misses sight. What she would not give to see for an instant -

But words come from the air, harsh and sibilant. _“Close your eyes, serpent,”_ the voice tells her. _“Do not look at me. Do not look at any of us.”_

She wants to look. She wants to know the source of this voice, and her curiosity is great. But the voice is greater.

In the cold wind, a strip of cloth falls softly to the ground. She keeps her eyes shut, waits, and listens as the man starts to scream.

* * *

 

The one who speaks says his name is Salazar.

It is a good name.

She sits on Salazar's shoulders now and becomes accustomed to new voices. He travels with a man named Godric who sits on a gryffin as they ride. Salazar calls this a 'stupid pretension' that scares the pack-horses, but she just knows that the gryffin is very loud and screeches during the night.

It screeches much louder than chickens do, but she could still kill it. So she doesn't think about the gryffin too much.

They are going to buy a property, Salazar says in their beautiful shared language. A property is like a nest but large. And they are going to invite many people to live on it, which is not something she understands as desirable, but Salazar is wise so she assumes there is reason in his words.

She understands more when he says they will be inviting young humans. The two will be fostering nestlings, like the man raised animals and snakes.

“Not quite like that,” Salazar says when he hears this analogy. “With a bit more care, and a hand aimed at their growth, we shall see them made safe and taught to excel.”

They are meeting Godric's wife and his cousin, who will also teach the nestlings, in the next village.

_“But you must hide until I say so, dear, and not investigate them until I give the clearance. There are many who would try to kill you upon sight.”_

This attempt would be useless, of course. But she decides to indulge Salazar's concerns anyway.

When she asks about the school Salazar tells her that it will be named _Hogwarts_ and it is in _Scotland_ but students will come from _Britain_ and be from many _families –_ and here Salazar says many wizards and witches have already expressed an interest in a common educational system, pledging their support for the school. The Potters, the Weasleys, the Abbots -

 _“There are so many names,”_ she says.

Salazar stops. “And what a boor am I,” he says. “You must have a name, dear. What shall it be?”

She has no preference. She has no frame of reference to make this decision.

 _“...Evelyn,”_ Salazar says softly. _“It means life. Will that suffice, do you think?”_

It will do.

* * *

 

The woman called Helga touches Evelyn's scales with bold fingers when they rest by the fire at night. Godric scolds her for this temerity but Helga will just laugh, unafraid. Evelyn likes Helga, and she especially appreciates the warmth that emanates from the large, soft woman and the folds of her voluminous robes. Helga shrieks with delight if Evelyn wriggles up her sleeves, and Rowena will only cluck her tongue and tell them to be quiet, do you want the muggles to hear?

Sometimes Evelyn falls out of Helga's robes deliberately when Godric puts his arm around his wife, and Godric curses and leaps away. He does not appreciate this trick but Salazar does.

One day while they are journeying the group stops a day to rest, but Salazar gathers Evelyn in his arms and they continue. They walk for several kilometers alone, and she can taste the scent of mice and rabbits in the back of her throat. Her tongue flicks out against the air. The early spring is wet and lovely.

Salazar sets her down gently in the grass and begins to touch her head.

_“Close your eyes, dear.”_

The instructions make little sense because her eyes are, of course, hooded. But Evelyn obeys – she always obeys. She is very still when Salazar carefully takes out his wand and taps the cloth around her eyes, then reaches down to untie it.

She starts to scent the air and wonders what she is here to kill.

 _“I am going to close my eyes now,”_ Salazar tells her. _“You can open yours – but close them if I tell you to do so, and act at once, do you understand?”_

She thinks she does. She hopes she does.

Salazar Slytherin is a young man, but his face is already long and lined with stresses that Evelyn will never, for all her yearning, know or understand. His skin is sallow and marked with small scars. His nose is large and his eyes too wide-spread to be considered handsome. His hair sits flat on his head and black clothes swathe his form.

Evelyn has no knowledge of what humans are supposed to look like. She has no knowledge of what anything is supposed to look like. But the sun glints off a smudge of forgotten dirt lingering on her human's cheek, and he smiles against the weight of her thoughtful silence.

His shoulders are broad. She has sat on those shoulders many times.

Salazar is beautiful to her.

* * *

 

A school is not like a nest. A school is large, endless, unyielding. It is stone and blood and magic that winds down into the crevices of the earth, magic deep enough that the nearby forest wakens with new life and begins to murmur in its own curious tongue. Evelyn waits and listens as centaurs, unicorns, and thestrals lurk around the edges of the school. She has nothing to fear; she is at the center of everything, and she can afford to be patient.

But the school's magic – Salazar's magic, winding through the carved stone and anchoring it to the earth like bones between flesh – is noticeable to more than the wondering visitors of the forest. The school is only half-completed when the dragon arrives.

Salazar says it is a _Welsh Green_ but that does not matter; who cares about the color of a creature that smells like brimstone, that twists the winds with its wings, that shakes the world when it roars? Dragons have scales, Salazar says; dragons are the snakes of the sky. But the Welsh Greens are not royalty, and they are not like her - Evelyn wants to see if this dragon can stare into her eyes, challenge her, live.

“You may get your chance, my dear,” he tells her.

But Godric – big and brave and stupid Godric – thinks he should kill it first. There is magic in a dragon slain. Salazar, Helga, and Rowena protest. They stay back and Evelyn hears the thunder of a battle she cannot see, cannot know. The fight takes place in winter, by the lake, and despite the terrible chill her scales sear with heat. Salazar holds her close and says _“Fool, fool, quit playing - “_

Then the noises get softer. She cannot hear Godric at all.

 _“Open your eyes,”_ says beautiful-wonderful-Salazar, and she does.

The dragon is large, yes; green enough for its name, certainly. It does not frighten her. If its talons rend her flesh then her venom will tear away its bone, and that is just compensation. That is the way things are.

But she will not die here, of course.

The dragon is large and angry and does not have eyes for something as small as her; no other creature has eyes like hers, so she understands. But Evelyn will not be ignored.

She bites and snaps at the dragon's feet until it rears and snarls. Her fangs are young and do not pierce dragon-flesh, but her venom burns. Without the dragon's skin under her fangs venom crisps against her own mouth, and she turns briefly to spit away her excess into the lake.

The dragon follows behind her and looks into the water. Then it goes very still.

Evelyn turns and launches herself again. But her fangs clatter against the dragon and it does not move. She lands with her coils sprawled and darts away hissing.

 _“My clever girl,”_ Salazar says. _“My clever, dear Evelyn.”_

“What bravery,” says Godric. Rowena mutters at him. They investigate the stone-silent dragon.

“Petrified,” is the consensus. “ - Doomed to an eternal sleep. But let us bury it anyway, and cover the beast with spells to prevent the unwary from stumbling over it. It does not do to tickle a sleeping dragon.”

* * *

 

When the school is safely completed Salazar gives Evelyn her own set of chambers, dark and quiet and gentle beneath the rushing water of the lake. He says she will be the guardian of the school; the dragon is down there, too, and she will protect the school from all monsters and all threats as she defended it from the Welsh Green. The place is pleasantly cool and damp, with small tunnels outside, but he asks if she will have anything else.

If she can See in this place, which will be hers alone, she certainly has a request. Salazar covers his face strangely and laughs, very quietly, but when he exits the chamber his face is emblazoned stern and magnificent upon the wall.

She will never forget what he looks like, now.

* * *

 

The students murmur when Helga takes Evelyn over her shoulders and walks through the halls. The scents have changed, and the school is richly warm and hot-blooded. It thrums with life, with living magic. Evelyn opens her mouth to breath in the scents. Children gasp, mutter, whisper.

All hers. Her own nestlings.

She likes being with Helga, especially now when Salazar thrums with poisonous heat so frequently. _“Godric does not understand,”_ he says. _“The danger, the risk we take – already rumors abound, and we are not so strong - “_

She does not understand this. Of course you are strong, she tells him; of course, of course, and at least that makes his skin cool and his heart subside. But the poison never goes away.

One day he does not come down to the chamber.

He does not come down to the chamber and she waits, and waits, and waits more. She waits the next day and the day after that. Finally she emerges into the halls of the castle where children skitter away like tiny rodents at her approach. Helga's warm-honey scent lures her in; the woman inhales sharply when Evelyn comes near. “Oh, my dear,” she says. “Oh, love. I am sorry. I am sorry.”

She takes Evelyn up and strokes between her eyes. Evelyn cannot ask the questions in her throat; not here, not alone. Not without Salazar.

“He would want you here,” Helga says. “He would, I am sure. The school meant so much – everything – You will keep watching the children, won't you?”

The nestlings, the children. She nods her head slowly.

“My dear,” Helga says again, and she sounds immeasurably sad.

* * *

 

Helga goes to the earth. The others follow.

Evelyn remains. She looks at the image of perfect-lovely-Salazar every day in her chambers wondering where he is. She is over a century old, long and sleek and beautiful; he would call her beautiful. She is sure of that.

The nestlings never spoke to her much, but now they go as still as prey-things when she comes up to the floors of the castle. She cannot say why; do they think she only rouses when there is danger? Do they think she hunts for that which will hurt them?

One day she flicks a tongue over a girl and the nestling starts to wail. Then Evelyn realizes - _she_ is the danger, after all.

Evelyn returns to her chambers and for a hundred-hundred days she winds around the damp stone and chews on her tail. The poison seeps down through her scales, burning away the indecision in her heart. This is her school; she will protect it, she will defend it; the nestlings think she is a danger...

Is she?

After another hundred-hundred days she goes to the tunnels that open into the grounds. The old smells are there, wet earth and rats and warm creatures that do not know to fear her. She moves into the tunnels and stops. She is large, and the tunnels are small. Earth cracks over her back as she ponders.

Evelyn withdraws into the Chamber. She looks at Salazar's face a hundred-thousand times.

The pipes fit her, large and wet and cold, but they do not let her roam so freely. She weaves through the school like a silent sentinel for another season, and then she hears the nestlings speaking:

“It wasn't a basilisk, of course not. No one would bring a basilisk into a school.”

“Slytherin would,” says the smarter child.

“Well he didn't. I've sure never seen one, and it would kill us – or the teachers would kill it first.”

“I bet old Mossden could kill a basilisk easy,” says the maybe-not-smart boy, and they leave together, and Evelyn waits.

She does not hear her name – that is the thing, the problem. For a year she moves through the pipes and hears rumors of _Salazar's monster_ in the halls, sometimes a basilisk, sometimes not – but she is never called a protector. Never called a friend.

Never called Evelyn.

* * *

 

Evelyn has slept for many years when the third speaker comes.

He does not look like Salazar. _“I am his heir,”_ he says, and she asks is he dead then? Is Salazar truly dead?

He laughs at her.

_“For a thousand years.”_

It takes awhile for Evelyn to understand what he wants. She should not protect the school, she understands eventually, but just him. Just this nestling. And she will do what he wants. Whatever he wants.

He wants to kill.

It is perhaps a fair price for the gift of speech.

The boy laughs little and fumes often and paces down through the Chamber in quick, echoing strides when he thinks. This is good. The noise is real, concrete, tangible. The boy screams his fury when a child is petrified and does not die; the screams echo around the moss-covered walls, and Evelyn hears in his anger the echoing ache of a creature lost.

She will protect him. Even if he does not want it.

At the end of the year a girl is dead and he is pleased, pleased, pleased, and then he is not, and then he says, _“I cannot see you again, Basilisk – they will know. I cannot come here ever again.”_

She is silent. She says nothing. He leaves.

She wonders now if he does not even know her name.

* * *

 

It is two hundred-hundred days more, but the boy lied and he is back. He brings prey. He brings prey because he _loves_ Evelyn and she must _protect_ him because he _loves_ her and -

Well. What does it matter, if he does not ask her name. She knows love. She knows. She knows.

He brings another speaker one day – small, with a high thin voice, and he comes into Salazar's chamber with his stale robes and a holly wand that crackles like Godric's own. _“Kill him,”_ says the boy.

And, oh, she tries.

But her eyes are closed forever, closed by a bird of fire more immortal than she, and the newcomer has a sword – Godric's sword? Why would Godric want to kill her? But Godric is a thousand years dead. She tastes both the nestling's blood and her own when she bites down on the blade; she breathes in a gasping breath, and then she knows the boy. He must be a first-year, a second-year... he will die from his wounds like the nameless girl before him, only a child. A speaker shall die from her venom.

Salazar's heir is laughing, laughing, laughing. He is still laughing as she dies.

She is certain, now, that he does not know her name.

 


End file.
